This blog--one of over 180 million--is uniquely devoted to Uncommon Christian Ministries (www.UncommonChristian.com), the preaching and writing ministry of Dr. Francis Kyle. And to all things James Brainerd Taylor (1801-1829), the recently rediscovered Princeton University and Yale Seminary-trained evangelist, cousin of famed Protestant minister David Brainerd (1718-1747) and third generation admirer of pastor-theologian and Brainerd biographer Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758).

Of the 50 or so innocent bystanders who were injured by a bomb at a crowded 3:00 p.m. Jerusalem bus stop on March 23, 2011, the 55-year-old Gardner was the only person who died. On her day off from school, she was walking by the bus stop in order to have lunch with an Irish friend who had just arrived in the city with a tour group. Though not a suicide bombing, it was the first bus bombing in The Eternal City since 2004 and the Second Intifada.

Gardner was a missionary with Wycliffe Bible Translators since 1986. She served in a remote area of Togo, West Africa, for 20 years, and helped complete the New Testament translation into the Ife tribal language in 2009. A short-term student studying biblical Hebrew at Hebrew University's Rothberg International School, the never-married Gardner was preparing herself to go back to the Togo tribesmen this summer in order to translate the Old Testament into Ife.

Born in Nairobi, Kenya, and the daughter (oldest of five children) of British missionary parents, she was a graduate of St. Andrews University (Class of 1977) in Scotland. A biographical summary of Gardner's life is available at Wycliffe Bible Translators' U.K. blog--click here.

"To me she came for help [during a near fatal storm at sea in Connecticut]; but not to myself--to Christ I directed her. Alas! the infatuation of mortals, to put off preparation for eternity till the hour of danger."~ James Brainerd Taylor

"In contemplating my latter end, the question arose what inscription would you have on your tombstone? And in thought I answered: ‘Here lies ––––. A sinner, born again; a sinner, washed, and justified, and sanctified. A sinner, once an heir of hell, a child of the devil, by wicked works; but by grace, a child of God and an heir of heaven; a miracle of grace, deserving all the miseries of the second death; and yet an expectant of endless glory and felicity. Farewell earth; welcome heaven. I am nothing; Jesus is all.’”~ James Brainerd Taylor(journal entry--July 19, 1823--Lawrenceville, N.J.)